In setting a page of printed matter the colonial printer rapidly plucked the necessary characters, one by one, from their compartments in the upper and lower cases. He placed them, with proper spacing, in a “composing stick” set to the proper length of line. When the stick was full he transferred the type to a shallow wooden tray called a “galley.” Having assembled in the galley enough type to form a page, the printer “tied it off,” i.e., bound a piece of string tightly around the whole mass. Then he could slide the assembled page off the galley onto the surface of the “imposing stone,” a flat marble working surface. Such transfers of type—especially from composing stick to galley—were often attended with accidents. One of the printer’s commoner frustrations was to have a stick, a galley, or even a whole page form of type dropped and “pied.” On the imposing stone a rectangular wrought-iron frame or “chase” was then placed around the type, and the finished page was locked into place with wooden blocks and wedges called “furniture” and “quoins.” After being locked, it could be picked up and moved to the printing press without danger of the type falling out of place. The eighteenth-century printer used paper made by hand from linen rags, importing it from Great Britain in the earlier years while domestic mills were gradually developing. Because such paper was uneven in texture and poorly sized, it was dampened before being put on the press to provide a more pliant working surface. For ink, Parks and his contemporaries used a combination of lampblack and varnish, which remain the chief constituents of printer’s ink today. Lampblack was obtained by burning various materials and collecting the carbon in flues, while varnish was made of pine resin boiled in linseed oil until a clear liquid resulted. Most printers “rubbed” or mixed the lampblack and varnish thoroughly. If the mixture was too thick, it could be thinned with linseed oil or whale oil. If red ink was desired for two-color printing, vermilion could be substituted for lampblack. [Illustration: _A view of a typical eighteenth-century printer’s composing room. Here type was set by hand to be printed on the press. (1) Setting type in a composing stick. (2) Transferring a stick of set type to a galley. (3) Planing a type form by beating lightly on the type surface with a block of wood and a mallet._ DIDEROT.] [Illustration: _A typical press room. The puller and beater are shown in two stages of the operations. On the left, a sheet of paper is placed on the tympan by the puller, and the type is inked by the beater. On the right, the puller is printing an impression on the paper, and the beater is distributing ink on his stocks while he inspects the previous pull._ DIDEROT.]